The roots of employee (sometimes aka work, e.g., Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010a) engagement research likely started with theoretical expansions of forms of employee participation (see, for example, Ferris & Hellier, 1984) and job involvement (e.g., Elloy et al., 1991). This exploration extended into broader considerations of attitudes and emotions (Staw et al., 1994) and were informed by further exploration of the dimensionality of constructs such as organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991). The 1990’s saw focused development and refinement. Staw et al. (1994) investigated the relationships between positive emotions and favorable work outcomes, and although they do not use the word, “engagement”, their distinction between felt and expressed emotion likely held influence upon the burgeoning interest in the engagement construct.
Our theoretical conceptualization of work engagement is primarily informed by Schaufeli & Bakker (2003) and Rosenberg (1960). Through the lens of our framework, engagement is a mental state wherein employees: a) feel energized (Vigor), b) are enthusiastic about the content of their work and the things they do (Dedication), and c) are so immersed in their work activities that time seems compressed (Absorption). We further decompose each of these facets into three attitudinal components: d) feeling (e.g., affect), e) thought (e.g., cognition), and f) action (e.g., behavior).
Of the 743 total Qualtrics panel respondents, roughly half were excluded based on conservative indices of carelessness across the larger survey. These screens included respondents with more than 50% missing responses, those who provided consistently non-differentiating responses across more than 12 consecutive items, and those who completed the survey in less than 300 seconds. These conservative screens resulted in a retained validation sample of 377. All analyses were derived from this n of 377.
We used R (Version 4.2.0; R Core Team, 2022) and the R-packages careless (Version 1.2.1; Yentes & Wilhelm, 2021), corrplot2021 (Wei & Simko, 2021), papaja (Version 0.1.0.9999; Aust & Barth, 2022), psych (Version 2.1.9; Revelle, 2022), and tinylabels (Version 0.2.3; Barth, 2022) for all our analyses. As a straightforward validation study, our analyses consisted predominantly of Pearsons product-moment correlations.
| Substantive | Attitudinal | Item.Number | Item.Stem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Absorption | Cognitive | 1 | I am able to concentrate on my work without getting distracted |
| Absorption | Cognitive | 3 | Time passes quickly while I’m working |
| Absorption | Affective | 5 | I enjoy thinking about work even when I’m not at work |
| Absorption | Affective | 8 | I love starting my workday |
| Absorption | Behavioral | 10 | I have to be reminded to take breaks while I’m at work |
| Absorption | Behavioral | 11 | I never miss a work deadline |
| Vigor | Cognitive | 14 | Thinking about work saps my energy |
| Vigor | Cognitive | 16 | I’m able to maintain good levels of energy throughout the workday |
| Vigor | Affective | 17 | I enjoy spending time completing my job tasks |
| Vigor | Affective | 19 | I feek motivated to go beyond what is asked of me at work |
| Vigor | Behavioral | 21 | When work is slow I find ways to be productive |
| Vigor | Behavioral | 22 | I express enthusiasm for my job while at work |
| Dedication | Cognitive | 25 | I plan to stay with this company as my career advances |
| Dedication | Cognitive | 26 | I believe this company cares about my career goals |
| Dedication | Affective | 31 | I feel proud of my accomplishments within this organization |
| Dedication | Affective | 32 | My job makes me feel like I’m part of something meaningful |
| Dedication | Behavioral | 34 | I embrace challenging situations at work |
| Dedication | Behavioral | 35 | I speak positively about this organization to others |
Note. The recommended response scale is ‘Strongly Disagree’, ‘Disagree’, ‘Somewhat Disagree’, ‘Somewhat Agree’, ‘Agree’, and ‘Strongly Agree’. TAKE THE ITEM # COLUMN OUT BEFORE FINAL POSTER
The items comprising the focal measure along with their scale associations and recommended administered response scale are located in Table 1. The current sample internal consistency estimates for our three substantive subscales were: 1) Absorption (\(\alpha\) = 0.75), 2) Dedication (\(\alpha\) = 0.89), and 3) Vigor (\(\alpha\) = 0.75), and estimates for our three attitudinal subscales were: 1) Affect/“Feel” (\(\alpha\) = 0.86), 2) Behavior/“Do” (\(\alpha\) = 0.77), and 3) Cognition/“Think” (\(\alpha\) = 0.77).
For convergent validity indices, we administered the 17-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al., 2002; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010b) as well as Saks (2006)’s 12-item measure which aggregates to two scales: job and organizational engagement (see also Saks, 2019).1 An example item from the Saks (2006) (job) scale is, “Sometimes I am so into my job that I lose track of time”. An example item from the Schaufeli et al. (2002) scale is, “At my work, I feel bursting with energy”. The Schaufeli et al. (2002) measure follows the same structure as our focal measure, so we aggregated to subscales of Absorption (\(\alpha\) = 0.84), Dedication (\(\alpha\) = 0.87), and Vigor (\(\alpha\) = 0.85). Internal consistency estimates for the Saks scale were \(\alpha\) = 0.69 (job engagement) and \(\alpha\) = 0.84 (organizational engagement). Also note here that the English version of the UWES may actually be a translation (it is difficult to say for sure, as the test manual describes an original Dutch sample although the manual is written in English). Further suggesting that the English version may be a translation, some items have odd grammar (for example, “I am proud on [sic] the work that I do”).
Two short scales from the Oregon Avocational Interest Scales (Goldberg, 2010) were retained for discriminant validitation - the 5-item “Pets” and 5-item “Household Activities” scales. These items asked how frequently respondents engaged in different activities. An example Household Activity item is, “Cleaned the house” (current sample \(\alpha\) = 0.72) and an example Pets item is “Fed a pet animal” (current sample \(\alpha\) = 0.88).
We had also intended to use the Gallup “Q12” for construct validation (Harter et al., 2013; Thackray, 2005), but Gallup was not willing to share item- or person-level data.↩︎